1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a surface ownership data management system. More particularly, the invention relates to a system, method, and computer program for gathering and managing surface ownership data for properties in a geographic area on which an asset, such as a pipeline, is located.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Corporate and governmental entities often must gather and manage ownership information for properties so that owners of the properties can be periodically notified of events that may affect or relate to their properties. For example, petroleum companies own pipelines and related assets which pass through properties owned by other persons or entities. The petroleum companies therefore must obtain rights-of-way or easements to the properties to install, test and periodically maintain their pipelines. For example, brush often must be cleared from around the pipelines, thus necessitating access to the properties on which the pipelines are located.
Each time a petroleum company desires to enter properties on which its pipelines are located, or perform testing which may affect the properties, it must notify all affected property owners so that the owners are inconvenienced as little as possible. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that this can be a tremendous undertaking because some pipelines run through hundreds and even thousands of individual properties, especially in urban areas where land is often subdivided into many parcels and individual lots.
Current methods of gathering and maintaining ownership information for properties are very labor and time-intensive. A petroleum company that wishes to notify property owners of maintenance along a section of pipeline currently sends employees or agents to the courthouses of the counties through which the pipeline runs to manually search through deeds and other legal descriptions to identify all property owners that could be affected by the maintenance. The gathered information is then recorded by typing it into word processors, photocopying it, and/or manually handwriting the information onto sheets of paper. All of the gathered information must then be consolidated and typed into some other form, such as a word processing program so that it may be used to send notices to all the affected property owners. Such manual methods of gathering and recording ownership data are highly inefficient and prone to error because the information is typically entered two or three times before it is actually used to send out the notices.
Current manual methods of gathering and maintaining ownership data are also often over-inclusive because county records are not accurate enough to identify only those property owners through which a pipeline runs. In some cases, ownership information is gathered for an entire zip code because it is too difficult to identify only those properties within that zip code that are crossed by the pipeline. When notices are sent to every property owner within an entire zip code, many property owners are contacted unnecessarily, resulting in wasted efforts in gathering some of the ownership information and unnecessary mailing of notices to landowners who turn out to be unaffected by the maintenance.
Another limitation with current methods of gathering and maintaining ownership information is that once gathered and used for a specific purpose, the information is typically discarded because it is not organized and stored in a manner that facilitates re-use. Thus, when the same property owners need to be notified again, the information must be re-gathered.